Automatic reboots on boot attempts

[jaymax]

uname -a

FreeBSD MACH1 10.2-RELEASE FreeBSD 10.2-RELEASE #0 r286666: Wed Aug 12 19:31:38 UTC 2015 root@releng1.nyi.freebsd.org:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC i386

On booting, everything seems to run OK up to a point. POST runs as expected, hardware/device probe runs with bright white foreground text fonts to stdout. I can't tell if the probe is completed because of its rapidity, but apparently stalls afterwards as there is no further output, in fact the screen display disappears.

The system at this point or after some irregular delay period will do an automatic reboot, [BIOS being set for auto reboot on 'Power OFF'].

There is no indication of entering the init stage of the bootstrapping process?
i.e. no grey text displayed!
There is no evidence of a 'PANIC' either.

My mobo caps seems fine, no bulges or leaks!
Of course I can't see those in the PSU although I swapped another in.
And there is no dmesg to retrieve.
Is there some way of figuring out what is really going on here?

Now, if I boot with the livefs {FreeBSD 10.2 Release Disc} - system boots fine.
mount -t ufs /dev/gpt/gptrootfs /mnt
mount -t devfs /dev /mnt/dev
chroot /mnt
mount -a

Apart from a couple of fscks_ufs everything seems fine and stable.

Shutdown, followed by a power-up and the problem re-asserts itself. My /boot/loader.conf is currently empty - continual reboots.

Returning to the livefs.
I have to do a fsck_ufs on all the disks, system and non-system disks:
The universal precipitating message is

mount will invalidate journal contents

Then the traditional fsck stuff with a

RECOVER ? yes
**building recover table**
**Resolving unreferenced inode list**
**Processing journal entries**
WRITE CHANGES? yes
*****File System Marked Clean*****

Should I do a normal boot, the same auto reboots occur, necessitating an unceremonious shutdown and perhaps dismount; anyway apparently the system becomes dirty'. Given that the system did not mount I would have expected this of the system disk and not all!

What could possibly be amiss here and what are reasonable possible solutions? hopefully not a re-installation.

Isn't it safe to assume that since the system is stable with the livefs and all the disks mounted that I can eliminate any consideration of a hardware problem?

 

[jaymax]

Could this be a getty / ttys* corruption/failure? As in /usr/lib/libexec/getty:
I am hard pressed for a possible infraction.

The livefs CD, boots and run fine, stable with all disks mounted, which I think should eliminate memory and PSU issues.

The fsck_ufs on all the disks, system and non-system disks prior to livefs mounting and after normal mount attempt - indicates that all the disks were momentarily mounted or attempted to ... during a normal boot attempt.

So the SNAFU should be occurring in between those steps, I would think.
Hope there is someone out there, even in the 'clouds' (perhaps an angel) with some idea on this!

Thanks

 

[jaymax]

After posting and waiting about a month for a reply, I am about to bade farewell to FreeBSD. Reluctantly, perhaps and to give linux a try, after 15 yrs w/FreeBSD.
I have reinstalled this system, repeatedly - including Apache24, MySQL & PHP54 ad infinitum cum nauseam, the latter three compiled from the ports.
I have disabled acpi in the /boot/device.hints file w/

hint.acpi.0.disabled="1"

The MD5 and SHA512 hashes for the downloaded *.iso file for the Release are correct.
There was some problems initially with the PHP installation but these were overcome.

I DO NOT KNOW WHAT NEXT TO TRY!

Is there another reliable site where one can get assistance?

 

[wblock@]

It is really difficult to tell from that post what is going on. The specific hardware being used is never mentioned. It reboots, but somehow has PHP installed? You can try the freebsd-questions mailing list, or you could post details here.

Skimming through that thread, I would guess a power supply or memory problem, but it is really hard to say. If it were me, I would swap either the power supply or memory (not both) and see if the problem changes.

 

[jaymax]

It is really difficult to tell from that post what is going on. The specific hardware being used is never mentioned. It reboots, but somehow has PHP installed? You can try the freebsd-questions mailing list, or you could post details here.

Skimming through that thread, I would guess a power supply or memory problem, but it is really hard to say. If it were me, I would swap either the power supply or memory (not both) and see if the problem changes.

Well, I mentally eliminated the Power supply, perhaps naively so; because the system was stable for several days with the livefs of FreeBSD, MFSBSD & Knoppix etc. I did however swap a larger one in later. Characteristic voltages of 12V and 5V were obtained, ground is as expected 0V, I can't say anything about rippple V as I do not have a scope. I minimized the load with a single system disk - a new one too. Is that a safe assumption? I did not fiddle with the memory. The system seemed to have been installed OK - but with the subsequent installation of Apache | MySQL | PHP all together or in part it/they seemed to have clobbered the init step in bringing the system up.

After the installation of the FAMP the system seemed to be fine for several days, although I did not get an info().php output. WordPress had been installed also and I was working on the info().php issue.

I eventually shutdown or rebooted the machine, that went smoothly but on booting up it would not go beyond the device probes stage. Yet it is fine with the various livefs and the root disc and other discs mounted off of /mnt.

HW info:
MOBO: Model: AK32A
Memory: KVR266x64c2/512 2GB
hw.machine: i386
hw.model: AMD Athlon(tm) XP 1800+
hw.ncpu: 1
hw.machine_arch: i386
Several HDD, Currently just 1- 1TB sys disk LABEL gpt/gprootfs 483183820800 512 i 0 o 0

 

[wblock@]

That is an old system, and seems about right for the capacitor plague. They can fail without visible signs, on the motherboard or in the power supply. Memory can also fail without warning. Either will make for weird random symptoms. One easy test is to remove half of the RAM and see if the problem goes away.

 

[jaymax]

Had been thinking about that, I do have another set of RAM, might do one more install and if that fails may just scrap the box.

 

[leebrown66]

Have you tried erasing the BIOS? I had a very troublesome old dual Pentium motherboard that wouldn't install properly (well it would install, but crash with 10 minutes of booting).

Following the manufacturers recommendations, I shorted the appropriate pins on the motherboard, reconfigured the BIOS exactly the way I had it before and it became rock solid.

I have also had a bad memory stick cause random post-installation issues that days of running memtest (off some linux livecd) didn't show up, but pulling cards one-by-one did.

Good luck. All the hardware I've failed to install FreeBSD on has turned out be faulty, despite my determinism it was FreeBSD that was the culprit.

 

[jaymax]

Thanks! Interesting twist - I'll give them a try - but which pins on the MB was shorted out to erase the BIOS?

Was this just shorting the CMOS or actually clearing the BIOS?

 

[kpa]

Thanks! Interesting twist - I'll give them a try - but which pins on the MB was shorted out to erase the BIOS?

Was this just shorting the CMOS or actually clearing the BIOS?

The instructions you were given are ambiguous, resetting the BIOS always refers to resetting the BIOS settings using the usual solder points or detaching the CMOS battery, not wiping the actual BIOS program.

 

[leebrown66]

Yes, erasing the CMOS or BIOS configuration data. If you erase the BIOS code your motherboard cannot boot.
As to which pins, that is so specific to the motherboard, you'll have to find the manual for the motherboard itself

 

[sidetone]

My computer shut down a lot. The problem temporarily went away after getting dust out of it.

What really worked for me is lowering the settings in bios, such as acceleration, turbo and overclock settings to standard. That suggested, those settings required more power than my (500W) power supply could regularly provide. I haven't had that problem since.